You indicate that Tri-Cities can be competitive for local phone services. What about the effect of MCI WorldCom rolling in and offering combined long distance and local phone services?
A. MCI WorldCom would not be offering facility based phone service in the Tri-Cities but would be reselling service over the existing Ameritech infrastructure. Technical support would still be provided by Ameritech. Therefore, customers would receive no material benefit whatsoever from subscribing to local phone service provided by MCI WorldCom other than possibly price. With the margins for reselling local service being very small, a lower price if offered is likely to be so slight as to not be material.
